Private Prisons Worked To Pass AZ Immigration Law

A new NPR investigation uncovers evidence that the controversial Arizona immigration law came to pass thanks in large part to an intense lobbying campaign by a group that stood to profit from its enactment: private prisons.

If a prison costs a state $10 million a year to run it, but a company comes in asking if they can have the chance to run it, asking only $8 million to do it… why not try? Obviously they’ll have to abide by the laws and you’ll incur a bit of expense in making sure they aren’t cutting corners… if the total cost of the privatized prison is less than $10 million… why not?

1. Many red light camera tickets are given to the owner of the car, not the driver. By law, it is the driver that is running the red light, not the owner. Knowingly giving out false tickets is a violation of due process.

2. Many red light camera ordinances make the ticket a “civil” wrong. By doing this, they lower the standard of guilt from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to “preponderance of evidence.” This makes it more likely that the hybrid Government/Private entity will get money. It is a greedy scam.

Actually in some areas this is still a disputed area of the law (iirc there’s still an active dispute in Lousiana over this very issue). Just because the 7th has ruled one way does not mean that it won’t eventually work it’s way up to the Supremes and even if it reaches them, they do occasionally get things horribly wrong (remember Dred Scott?).

As far as why it may be a violation of due process, it was my understanding that a fair number of tickets are thrown out because they don’t actually get a picture of who was driving or they can’t get a clear view of the person and others are thrown out because they can’t get a good view of the license plates in order to even determine which car ran the light.

Plus there is also the question of whether the lights were setup in an unsafe manner. In Dallas, “of the ten cameras that issue the greatest number of tickets in the city, seven are located at intersections where the yellow duration is shorter than the bare minimum recommended by the Texas Department of Transportation.” Remember due process is meant to protect the citizens from the state and instances like that really make me wonder if that’s happening when municipalities used things like red light cameras.

Due process is a red herring here. Red-light cameras corrupt of the law-enforcement role of government, because the profits to be reaped are so tempting that cities shorten the yellow-light cycle so that they can write more tickets:

There is a due-process boondoggle that gets played out, too: a local company operating red light cameras will mail out phony “citations” that aren’t really tickets, just offers to settle, because their profit margins are higher if they avoid the extra steps of filing whatever affidavits and other paperwork are required to make them into official tickets. But the first mailing LOOKS like a citation coming under color of authority; you have to read the fine print to realize it’s just bluster from a private company begging for money. If you ignore that one, which you may, then they might go through the extra steps to involve actual police, and then you’d get a real ticket. This two-step procedure games the notion of due process, in my opinion.

Anyway, like I said, the bigger story is the corruption. Although red light cameras bring in private profits and revenue to cities, they do so at the cost of increased accidents, which is not a good tradeoff.

So who do you think would be watching the prisoners while they’re in these private prisons? Who do you think would determine if someone had met the criteria for “good behavior” and who would then would also determine if someone had committed a crime while in prison and therefore needed to spend more time in prison? The prison system is already rife with the opportunity for abuse, if you add a financial incentive any actual abuse that does occur is only going to get worse.

Money talks and I would bet you the folks running these prisons would have no problem making more money by keeping “bad guys” off the streets for as long as possible.

No, they’re not enforcing the law. They are operating a facility that is controlled by the state or federal government. Enforcement is done by the judicial branches of the United States and state governments. They must operate inside the laws and procedures laid out by the respective jurisdiction.

Should we privatize those oversight functions too? After all, they are just government employees, so they must be a waste of tax payer dollars, right? Certainly the private sector can provide this oversight function more efficiently and cost effectively then our behemoth of a government.

Officers of the law and government officials clearly shouldn’t (and can’t) be privatized. But to argue that privatization is inherently bad is uninformed. Local municipalities routinely privatize waste management, water supply and grounds maintenance. Some cities outsource highway maintenance and their toll plazas. The outsourcing of government responsibilities isn’t a new idea, nor is it a bad one. There clearly needs to be oversight but it could save the taxpayers money.

Now, to the original intent of the article, I completely disagree with what’s going on in AZ. This is a disgusting example of a private corporation attempting to manipulate law for its own benefit. While this happens every day, this example is especially horrid because of its effect on the people of Arizona.

Privatizing wastewater treatment and garbage collection are nothing like privatizing prisons. For one thing, if the garbage company is doing a lousy job, the voters will punish officials at the next election, so there is an incentive to make sure cost savings are achieved with some modicum of responsibility. Felons cannot vote in many places, so if money is being saved by treating them in ways that are completely inhumane and unacceptable, they have no recourse but to go to court and try to win against a billion-dollar corporation that has complete control over their daily lives and can prevent them from gathering or keeping any evidence of misdeeds, as well as punish them for drawing any attention to the issue.

And do you really think prison guards are not enforcing the law? It is their job to keep criminals in line, and they are allowed to use force to do so. Guards are allowed to punish people who do not comply with their directions, they can throw someone in isolation, take away property, even take away “privileges” like access to showers and toilets. If your toll collectors or garbagemen have this kind of power, I don’t want to live in your neighborhood.

Because when you give a for-profit entity financial motivation to keep people incarcerated, there is an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to due process. Suddenly, no one is granted parole, inmates receive increased sentences for “crimes” committed while in prison, judges receive kickbacks to sentence minor offenders to horrible sentences, etc. etc. etc.

When prisons are run by the govt, there is no rational motive for anyone to want to build more prisons or pass stricter laws except the motive to promote justice and the common good. When for-profit prisons appear, a *large* and powerful industry is born which can exert its power to build more prisons and pass stricter laws simply for the sake of having more prisons and more prisoners — more profit.

If you think that prisons recoup even a tiny amount of cash you are delusional. Those work programs are usually designed to keep the inmates busy or to do a public service. Often they don’t even brak even, but are cheaper than other forms of entertainment/distraction.

Part of the cost =/= all of the cost, and especially =/= profit. The state does not profit from prisons. Also, from what I understand, prisoners get paid for their labor. They don’t get paid much, certainly not the minimum wage, but they get paid something. Again, if the state wants to profit from prisons, why pay these guys anything/

In addition to recouping a fraction of the total outlay to house a prisoner, it’s also a means to provide an inmate with some sort of skill they can use outside of prison rather than just the skills needed to become a better criminal. It also provides inmates with something to do other than beef up in the yard and join a gang and continue criminal activities inside.

Because the primary goal of a private prison is to make a profit. Do you really not see the inherent problems with that, as opposed to the primary goal being to run a safe, secure prison in accordance with the law?

Why aren’t we farming these out to third world countries, anyway? We could easily build state of the art prisons with minimal US oversight while employing third world labor as guards for a fraction of the cost of doing it here.

It would be MUCH cheaper to outsource some of the prison population (supermax type) overseas.

How about a liquor store lobbying for the county/city to actually enforce the dry-rules in the county that are not being enforced? IE, small stores selling wine/beer when they shouldn’t and the authorities turning a blind eye to it.

What I was saying is the law is designed to increase incarceration rates.

The way I understand the law, and I’m on the east coast so I don’t give too much of a shit about it, is that the cops are now able to stop and determine the immigration status of anyone they interact with in the line of duty. Couple of problems, if this assumption is correct:
1) Which “papers” will be acceptable to the cops? I don’t look latino and i was born in the US so will my state issued driver’s license suffice? what if i don’t have it on me, do i go to jail until i can prove my innocence?
2) a cop walking down the street says “hi” to a latino…do they now have the right to question that person’s status? or there’s a murder and 3 witnesses…do these witnesses now have to be concerned that they’ll be asked for their “papers”?

Either way, my point is that the governor is invested in this entity that is attempting to profit from the tax payers. If nothing else, it reeks of conflicts.

I’m from California, specifically the greater LA area, so I’ve watched this case with quite some interest.

First, I don’t think illegal aliens can get drivers’ licenses in Az. Perhaps a local could clarify this. So yes, an ADL would probably suffice.

Second, there was a bill passed days later clarifying that the police must first have performed a legal stop before proceeding with ascertaining citizenship status, and even then, can only do so based on reasonable suspicion and not based on skin color, nationality, etc. as outlined in federal anti-profiling laws. Criticizing the SB1070 on this particular point is kind of splitting hairs, however, since the law is designed to require police to probe for citizenship status when performing legal stops. Even in its original language, it would have been an abuse of the law for an officer to stop someone on the street solely for the purpose of examining citizenship status.

That said, I’m not entirely sure it’s fair to lament that prisons lobbied for the law when the plain fact of the matter is that the Mexican Drug war is spilling into America. The Arizona state police have even advised against any kind of stopping in much of the southern park lands and even in areas as far as 40 miles north of the border. The smuggling lanes are extremely dangerous, and the spillover of the drug war in Phoenix has led it to be country’s leader in kidnappings. When asked for help from ICE, what they got was signs posted in these territories warning travellers to keep moving. Any reasonable person would see this as a flat out border insurrection and recognize that current federal actions are insufficient. The powers that Arizona holds as a state are of course limited so they’ve tried to do what they can to bring this issue into the national spotlight.

Pffffffttt… I’ve lived in the area you’re talking about my entire life and I’ve never once felt threatened when out hiking/hunting/exercising. I’ve seen illegals crossing over, but they always scurry off like frightened animals. That doesn’t mean bad thing can’t happened, but there certainly isn’t an “insurrection.”

As was stated elsewhere in this feedback, the law that was enacted was written to INCREASE arrests, for the pruprose of maximizing profit. The airwaves were then blitzed with rhetoric and hyped-up attempts to increase fear and concern, so that more public money would be redirected from other public interests and spent on private corporations.

In other words, do we rally want corporations and/or foreign governments to be able to so directly direct/influence the use of public funds, at the expense of everyone?

Well, the private company may be performing that “service” but it is still being paid for with state and federal taxpayer dollars. If they are trying to gin up reasons to imprison more people at taxpayer expense while potentially violating their constitutional rights, there is certainly more than one legitimate reason for taxpayers to be aware of this and look into how their dollars are being spent to benefit this fully government-funded “private” enterprise.

I think that this case is going to far, far more reaching than you think it will be.

There are several questions that will be answered.

The first is “Can a state pass a law identical to a federal law?” Before now, that was obviously a “yes” – which is why we have state and federal laws that in many cases overlap – such as murder. Does that mean every state will have to do away with its own murder statues and use the federal one? After all, the Supremacy Clause cannot be “turned off” on a case-by-case basis.

The second is “If a state can pass a law identical to a federal law, but pursues different implementation/enforcement patterns, does the Supremacy Clause come into effect?” That’s a much more delicate issue – what if the federal government refuses to enforce a law? What, if instead of being immigration, it was insider trading? Or the EPA and environmental law?

The last is “Can a state pass a law more strict than federal law?” I think you can see why this would come into effect.

Sadly, these three (and more) questions won’t be answered at once. But if the AZ law goes down, it’ll be decided in the courts for decades. And, as well, Sanctuary Cities would become illegal as well…

You’re a bit off. The supremacy clause simply states that the Constitution and laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land.

A state murder charge and a federal murder charge do not overlap. The federal government cannot charge me with murder if I kill my neighbor. This crime took place inside Illinois’ borders and they have jurisdiction. Now, if I kill someone across state lines or a federal employee or a bank employee, the federal government can pursue murder charges. These aren’t overlapping as they both address different jurisdictions.

In the case of Arizona, we’re talking about something that is entirely within the jurisdiction of the United States and the states have absolutely no authority to enforce immigration laws. Additionally, they have no authority to create immigration legislation on the state level.

Regarding the EPA, you or I can actually sue the EPA for failure to enforce their policies. Unfortunately, this procedure doesn’t exist for every area of law.

Wrong. Please provide me with the federal law that regulates the sale of alcohol. Per the commerce clause, they can regulate interstate sale and transport of alcohol but they have absolutely no jurisdiction to restrict the sale of alcohol inside a state.

So, dry counties are not an example of a local government passing legislation that is more strict than the federal government.

The federal government and state government have separate jurisdictions and responsibilities outlined by the Constitution. The federal government cannot interfere in matters that are not assigned to it by the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The 10th Amendment prevents the overlapping of federal and state rights and thus prevents a state from passing legislation that is more strict than federal law.

Ok, here is the law, which is case law rather than legislation, but that doesn’t make it any less binding. The commerce clause is the constitutional hook on which it hangs.

The case is Wickard v. Filburn (1942) in which the Federal government asserted authority over wheat that wasn’t even being sold at all, on the legal theory that because wheat, in general, is traded in interstate commerce, any wheat (even grown by a farmer who was growing the wheat for his own use) was subject to Federal power. About sixty years later, John Ashcroft recycled this same theory to assert Federal authority over marijuana plants that were likewise not even being sold, simply because marijuana is traded in interstate commerce (albeit illegally). SCOTUS agreed 5-4 with him.

Because alcohol, too, is sold interstate, the Federal government certainly could assert authority over its sale with the same justification.

The term private prison is a bit of a misnomer. While the prisons are private, for-profit entities, their revenue comes from federal, state, or local governments. This means the costs for incarcerating their inmates come at the expense of the taxpayers. Also, this kind of thing is just begging to be abused…see the story of the judge who received kickbacks for referring juveniles to a for-profit facility in Pennsylvania:

The prison industrial complex disgusts me, and these “private” prisons are the worst of the bunch.

To add a cherry on this shit sundae, I find it incredibly hypocritical that the individuals lobbying for these large institutions are the same people who constantly preach for the need of a smaller, more efficient government.

But what if the private prison implants nanomites into the prisoners, and makes them play 1st person shooter-esque video games, controlled by teenagers for the enjoyment for the populace as a whole? Do you think the civilians would be placated? Or would they still rise up?

So, since the left seems to think it is OK to allow illegal immigrants to break the law, because the people in Mexico are just looking for a better life, would they also agree it OK for my family to break into a $1,000,000 house that is nicer than our own? How about just squat my bosses office? Gas is pretty expensive and I need it to get to work, so are drive offs at the pump OK for poor people?

Not trolling, just asking a serious question…What makes border enforcement any less “important” than enforcement of property laws? As of yet, other than the argument of “racism” or “because their life is so hard” I am not seeing any reason for this law to be disliked.

The racism issue is a natural, because of the location (lets just say there arent going to be many Chinese people coming over the Mexican boarder…), which needs to be monitored, but the stats will always fall on the “racist” argument for the purposes that effectively enforcing the law will show statistically high amounts of Mexican/Hispanics affected.

The problem is that this article isn’t about border enforcement or lack thereof, nor is it about the rightness or wrongness of Arizona’s immigration law. It’s about the invisible forces that stand to profit from the passing of that law, the shady backroom deals where it was conceived, and the lawmakers who received compensation to endorse it. By bringing up tangential issues (the social implications of the law itself), you’re clouding the issue with irrelevant partisan rhetoric.

You can imagine all the “shady back room deals” you want but in the end the people of Arizona got off their asses and voted “yes” for this law.

Bender123 makes some valid points. Most of the illegal immigrants in Arizona are Mexican, therefore any enforcement of immigration law is racist. The only politically correct thing to do is throw open the borders, the schools, the hospitals and the welfare office to anyone who decides to walk into the country. This is bull. No country on the planet allows this, including Mexico. Mexico has some of the harshest anti-immigration laws in North America to keep out the undesirable Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans.

I just saw you got it right in your first sentence, but then got it wrong twice in subsequent sentences. Boarder =/= Border. And of course the spell-check function saw nothing wrong.
Of course boarder enforcement is a good thing. You need to ensure that whoever is eating the food is the person entitled to do so. (BTW, should I have used ‘whom’ in that sentence? I can never remember that rule).
Border enforcement is a whole other kettle of fish.

Because the Arizona law was passed to increase profits to tax-payer funded “private” prisons by rounding up additional “customers” via extra-constitutional racial profiling. Taxpayers should be aware of both the intent and the cost of such measures when weighing what is pitched as a security measure but is actually a profit motive – that they are paying for. The only thing “private” about those prisons is the profit. The cost of doing business with the government is that sometimes you have to answer to the people who fund it.

that’s not why it was passed. it was passed b/c legistators voted for it, just like every other law. private prisons lobbying for it is no different than any other lobby. it’s no different than environmental companies that lobby for things like cap and trade and pollution laws so that they can make profit by cleaning up waste. just because one is “good”(environmental companies) and one is “bad” (prisons) doesn’t change the fact that they’re both donating money that’s in their best interests, which is perfectly legal and moral.

When the state decides who becomes a “customer” of the for-profit prisons, they aren’t like some other company where people can take their money elsewhere and vote with their dollars. Stop trying to make your ridiculous analogy that private prisons are just like any other company! Honestly, you only embarass yourself with such faulty logic.

Not a valid argument. The argument is more if you would jail someone that was speeding? Or someone that was caught littering? How about someone smoking in a non-smoking area? They are all illegal just like an illegal immigrant is illegal. However one form of punishment is an enormous cost to the tax payer.

Hey now… don’t hate on lobbyists. Sure, I hate these lobbyists, but I like the ones that lobby for more education funding, stricter gun laws, smoke-free work places, etc. Lobbying is not always a bad thing.

And you prove my point precisely! I like those lobbyists but you don’t. Lobbying is all about trying to push one opinion. There’s always a group of people who like that lobbyist and a group of people who hate him.

So? Most Americans (including Hispanics) are against illegal immigration, and our prisons are crowded enough with our own citizens without having to babysit Mexico’s criminals who view US prisons as a holiday vacation compared to what they have in Mexico.

And to the posters upset about this where’s your outrage over unions’ intense lobbying to re-elect Harry Reid? What about the pharmaceutical and health care companies who lobbied hard to get Obama’s Health Care Reform passed so that they can make even MORE money?

And what exactly do this have to do with consumers anyway? Stop peddling your political biases and get back to reporting on issues relevant to consumers. This isn’t Politico.

I don’t come here to read one sided politically loaded topics – I come here for consumer relayed tips and information. How does this possibly help me or any other consumer – why is this one-sided story even considered relevant?

So these private companies illegally took ballots and stuffed the ballot box? I mean, because the side that always spends the most money automatically wins?

Did Whitman win?
Did McMahon win?
Did Fiorina win?

Obama spent more money campaigning than McCain, should we call his election “controversial” and look at every single donation, like the ones from the evil “Hdusahfd” and “Hduadh” corporations. Or the donations from “Dahsudhu Hdusahfd” or “Doodad Pro”, they must have bought the election!!!!!!!!

I’m not surprised by any of this. I worked for CCA for two terrible years. I’m not opposed to privatized prisons, but this was one terrible company. I’m not surprised by the company lobbying for laws that increase inmate populations and create a need for their services.

The private companies running the prisons don’t decide when inmates are released or transferred and don’t have any impact on their paroles, either.

The private companies (when I worked for CCA) were paid a daily rate per inmate and additional incentive, such as providing vocational training to inmates.

Where I worked (in Texas), inmates preferred the state-run facilities over the private facilities for several reasons: better medical treatment, better food, and better employees/guards. I don’t blame them. I found it easier to relate to the inmates than my co-workers in a lot of cases.

I was reading some articles about CCA and GEO (formerly Wackenhut) and it seems they have had serious issues with how they treat people. If that can somehow be straightened out, I don’t have a problem with it, but we are talking about profit margins after all.

It seems to me like there’s potential for lawsuits against these companies if they are indeed treating people worse than the state run facilities. And potential for lawsuits against the government on civil rights grounds if they are treating some people worse than others by sending them to these outsourced facilities.

No, the legislators may have had a serious interest in enforcing immigration, but they let the people with the greatest profit motive write the legislation. That just smells funny (especially since the industry provided support to the legislators to attend these events that didn’t require any disclosure — unlike other lobbyists must do).

I don’t agree with illegal immigration, but the reality is that the people who come here illegally would almost never qualify for legal immigration (excluding some programs that help unify families). The economic incentive is much higher than the penalty for getting caught. Most immigration programs are for the educated and skilled.

I’m the first to say most Latinos are hardworking, moral people with a better family structure than most Americans.

The problem is that our government has countless social programs, an educational system that is more expensive then most any other nation, a medical system that provides some of the best care available – albeit at a high cost and a social net with entitlements that are barely covered now by middle class wage earners. All of this was based on the middle class economy of the 80s and 90s which is now fading away.

This system can’t be extended to non-skilled immigrants given the high cost of services and low taxes ..even if we legalize everyone the math doesn’t work!

We are already nearly bankrupt and under the current administration those numbers are growing even more now with the socialized medicine plan Obama forced on us.

It’s simply not feasible and will only push over the edge.

I’m not being an asshole, I’m telling it like it is. I work for a major health care system and since the influx of illegals in NC over the past 10 years, our indigent care has gone from 7 million to nearly 41 million.

We have illegals that come here and specifically have a baby just to cement citizenship and we end up writing off 17 thousand+ for the whole thing..then they move and we can’t find them since they’re illegal. That cost is passed on to you and me – don’t complain about the rising cost of health care in one breath and then support groups like La Raze in the other.

I agree that many of those are problems. The real question is how do you stop people from coming in who aren’t going to qualify for current immigration programs? Desperation is driving a lot of current illegal immigration. We can’t really build a fence to stop desperate people from coming in (next wave of boat people?), so what do we do to stop it?

Letting private prisons write legislation that will end up lining their pockets (and simply adding to the revolving door at the borders) probably isn’t going to do much to stem the tide.

Look, let the free market work its invisible magic. Criminals who want to be sent to publicly owned prisons will commit crimes in those jurisdictions; criminals who prefer privately owned prisons will commit crimes in *those* jurisdictions. Eventually we’ll have enough data to settle the question, and in the meantime, everyone has his or her preferred option.

Of all the privatization in government, private prisons scare me the most. No industry is in business to intentionally put itself out of business. Private prisons don’t want the crime rate to go down, they don’t want recidivism to go down. Rather they want those statistics to go up. And if they can’t do it by making sure that offenders become repeats, they’ll do it by lobbying for tougher laws that create MORE criminals. Prisons are the one thing that should NEVER EVER EVER be privatized because Justice cannot be profit driven.

More arguments about stupid paperwork that doesn’t really do anything. Put the law into effect. Or don’t. Whatever. Millions and millions of Mexicans will continue to cross into the country. We won’t catch 90% of them. But if the stupid senior citizens who run Arizona want police to deport all the scary brown people instead of catching real criminals, more power to them.

As an Arizona resident, I call bullsh*t on this. I’ve never heard of this and I work with the local Sheriff’s department. But so what? There will always be entities looking to make money on controversial things. You think solar companies aren’t in it for the subsidies? Think again. I know a guy who ran a solar business the last time it was popular back in the late 70s. As soon as the subsidies dried up, so did the industry.

As for SB1070, if you haven’t read all 17 pages of it you have no right to comment because you really have no clue what’s in it. That aside, as an American citizen born from legal immigrants, what law am I allowed to break and get amnesty for? Hmm??? Raiding Fort Knox sounds good right about now.

So, NPR’s investigation uncovers “evidence” of lobbying? This is lobbying working as is does everywhere else in politics. There’s nothing illegal here at all, so please stop trying to treat it as such.

I’ve come to expect this kind of liberal biased reporting from NPR. They have an agenda, and attack pieces like this show you what they are all about these days. I doubt you’d find any kind of investigative report from NPR on all the lobbying that big labor unions do.

So? George Soros gave $1 million dollars towards the legalize marijuana in California proposition. Personally I can’t understand why any American (citizen or legal resident) would be pro illegal alien. If we need foreign workers then fine, increase legal foreign labor residency.